


sour pasts, sweet futures

by Mertiya



Series: Fire Emblem Missing Scenes [8]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dessert & Sweets, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gen or Pre-Slash, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nightmares, Past Abuse, Pre-Time Skip, god this is the mother of all rarepairs, why did this happen to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21642511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Lysithea wakes Bernie up from a nightmare, and they bond over cake.
Relationships: Lysithea von Ordelia/Bernadetta von Varley
Series: Fire Emblem Missing Scenes [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1472576
Comments: 15
Kudos: 58





	sour pasts, sweet futures

**Author's Note:**

> I JUST THINK THEY'D BE THE CUTEST COUPLE FUCK
> 
> BE THE RAREPAIR YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD I GUESS

It’s well past time to be in bed, but Lysithea is studying, and sleep is for people who have lifespans. She frowns, squinting against the swimming burn of exhaustion in her eyes at the equations she’s worked out so far. There’s something wrong. This spell obviously won’t work, but she can’t seem to find the mistake. She sighs and presses the heel of her hands into her eyes—and then she hears the noise.

It’s soft, somewhere between a squeak and a tiny shriek. When Lysithea was a little girl, she had a pet mouse that made noises like that when it was particularly excited or scared. Sir Mousington lived a long life—for a mouse—and died of happy old age. Sometimes she still missed him. For a moment, she considers ignoring the noise—it is probably just one of the stable cats—and then it comes again, and she sighs, closes her notes, and gets up.

If she was studying in her normal spot, she wouldn’t have heard it, she realizes as she tracks the noise to Bernadetta von Varley’s bedroom door, but for once, she wanted fresh air and was using a candle and the moonlight to study outside. Bernadetta. Lysithea doesn’t know her very well. She’s in the Black Eagles house, and she isn’t exactly known for venturing outside her room. Again, Lysithea considers leaving—this is none of her business, and Bernadetta probably values her privacy—but she hears the sound of a soft, terrified sob, and she can’t stop herself from knocking and slipping inside. It’s not easy for Lysithea to ignore the sound of someone in pain.

Bernadetta is in bed, apparently asleep, although a rushlight above her desk illuminates the room quite brightly. Her tangled purple hair is a mess, and she’s clutching her pillow, crying, twitching. She must be having a nightmare. Lysithea hovers for an instant in the doorway and then heads to the side of the bed. “Bernadetta,” she hisses, and reaches out a hand, then pauses. If she’s having a nightmare—bad idea. “Bernadetta, wake up,” she says, trying to sound gentle, wondering what she’ll do if the noise isn’t enough.

It is, though, because Bernadetta opens confused grey eyes, which lock onto Lysithea’s, and then she sits up and screams at the top of her lungs.

Lysithea skips back a step, and it takes all her poise not to scream back or slap the other girl, but she manages it, because she’s been there. She’s woken up like that, screaming; she’s been slapped back to silence by a mage’s heavy hand. Her hands do ball into fists at her sides. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she says in a cool, formal voice, and she must surprise Bernadetta, because the other girl stops screaming and yanks her blankets up to her chin, blinking mouse-ishly over them.

“Please don’t kill me!” she says breathlessly.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Lysithea says, a little crossly, because isn’t it obvious what just happened? “You were having a nightmare, so I woke you up.”

“B-But you’re in my room!” Bernadetta says breathlessly. 

“Yes, so I could wake you up. I’ll be going now.” Lysithea rolls her eyes and starts to march out the door, when she’s stopped by a small objection from the occupant of the bed, “Wait!”

“What?” she says, and she must have let her irritation through a little too much, because Bernadetta flinches.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I just…thank you. For waking me up.”

“You’re welcome,” Lysithea sighs.

“Would you…would you like a piece of cake?”

Lysithea turns around and almost slams the door behind her. “Who told you I like cake!”

“No one!” With astonishing speed, Bernadetta dives for the floor, and the next second she’s actually underneath her bed. “Please don’t hurt me!”

Oh, Goddess. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Lysithea physically crouches. “I’m sorry for frightening you. I’m just…” She scowls, but her discomfort is less important that Bernadetta’s obvious, abject fear. “I do like cake, but I don’t want people to think I’m a child, so I don’t usually indulge.”

Two grey eyes peer out from under the bed, just like a little mouse peeking out from its hidey-hole. “You don’t have to be a child to like cake,” Bernadetta protests. “Cake is just _good_.”

Lysithea wrinkles her nose. “You’d be surprised at how many people are stupid and don’t think so,” she retorts. Blink, blink. “I would like a slice of cake,” she continues after a minute. “Thank you.”

“ _Promise_ you won’t kill me if I come out?”

“I promise. If I killed you, I wouldn’t get cake.”

“That’s true,” Bernadetta says thoughtfully, squirming out from under the bed. “I’ve hidden it very cleverly.”

“I’ll shut my eyes,” Lysithea declares. “Then I won’t know where you’ve hidden it, so you’ll know I won’t kill you.”

“Oh—th-thank you.”

Lysithea shuts her eyes, willing herself to ignore any sounds of shuffling as Bernadetta moves around the room, so that she can’t tell the location of the cake either.

“Here,” Bernadetta says, sounding timid. “You can open your eyes.” Lysithea does, and Bernadetta is kneeling across from her, holding out a slightly squashed piece of cake in one of the cloth napkins from the dining hall.

“Thank you,” she says, taking it gently. Her hand brushes Bernadetta’s, and Bernadetta shivers at the contact, eyes snapping down to the floor, but at least she doesn’t ask again if Lysithea is going to kill her.

It’s very good cake. Despite the slight squashing, it’s sweet and light and sticky. It tastes of chocolate and marshmallow. “Thiff amaffing,” Lysithea says, spraying crumbs all over the floor as she abandons any attempt to eat elegantly. Bernadetta bites her lip and actually giggles, and Lysithea is just so glad she’s smiling she doesn’t even mind being laughed at.

“I’m sorry you have nightmares,” she says, once she’s finished devouring the cake. “I—do, too.”

“You do?” Bernadetta’s eyes are wide, round, surprised. “You’re so smart, though. You’re so good in school and good at magic and good at everything.”

Normally, this sort of talk bothers Lysithea, but from Bernadetta, she _gets_ it. That terrified little noise. She’s pretty sure Bernadetta was trying, even in her sleep, to be _quiet_. “Yes,” she says. “I have nightmares all the time. Almost every night.”

“Oh,” Bernadetta breathes. “That’s awful. That’s so awful.”

Lysithea shrugs. “I can handle it,” she declares.

Bernadetta nods solemnly. “Maybe next time you have a nightmare you can come to me and get some cake? I know how to get more. But, of course, I won’t tell you, because—”

“Because then I might kill you.” Lysithea smiles and nods, and, somehow, breathtakingly, Bernadetta’s face scrunches up in a very sweet little smile as well. “Of course. But—yes. I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

It’s only when she tiptoes out of Bernadetta’s bedroom, shutting the door very carefully to avoid startling the occupant, that she realizes she might have made a friend.


End file.
